MOVEMENTS

“If anyone thinks the murder of little girls will bring this people to its knees … break our spirit or that we will relinquish our birthright, holy land and our eternal capital, he does not know the strength that exists in each person standing here around me today and in the entire nation.”

—BENJAMIN NETANYAHU                       
in the Jerusalem Post, March 14, 1997

 

TRANSLATION:

From the AnglSaiye KoPavi, Nasituda 11–12, Grouping D: “The Admonitions”

Sa!

When you hear the voice of VeiSaTi listen and obey, for with your God you are as JeJa is to TeTa

When you see the vision of VeiSaTi watch and believe, for it is a rare and true gift to glimpse the ShadowWorld

When the light of VeiSaTi moves over your brais do not crouch down in fear, for it is your duty to go where VeiSaTi takes you

When the taste of VeiSaTi is in your mouth swallow it gladly, for you will be both nourished and strengthened for what is before you

Sacrifice!
for by the gift of earth, air, and water the boundaries of the ShadowWorld are shattered and VeiSaTi’s presence is released

Give to VeiSaTi what Ke asks
By earth
By air
By water

JOURNAL ENTRY:

Anaïs Koda-Levin, O’Sa

JUST BEFORE I LEFT FOR HANNIBAL, I TOOK JITU, which is something I do rarely, and sacrificed a guffin before the Great Shell in the temple. I placed my sacrificial altar directly over the flagstone under which the Sa Beneath The Water now rests. Through the eyes of jitu, I saw the flagstone rise and the kahina of KaiSa came out to stand before me. Ke was lovely, with deep brown eyes, a golden brais, and a soft, embracing smile. Ke held out a hand to me, and I took it as I had many times during the weeks ker bog-preserved body had rested in my clinic back at the Rock—only now ker hands were warm and supple and alive, and they pressed back against my fingers. “O’Sa,” Kai said, and though ke spoke in the language of the Miccail which I speak only badly, I understood ker perfectly. Ker smile held the warmth of the sun. “Thank you for returning me to AnglSaiye. Thank you for bringing the Sa back to us.”

“That was VeiSaTi’s will. All I had to do was listen to Ker and do as Ke asked,” I answered, and ke laughed at that, gently.

“VeiSaTi isn’t your god.”

“Not then,” I agreed. “But Ke has become so, over the years. Ke is the god of all Sa, and many of my people.”

“Then you will listen to what Ke asks and do it, as I did?”

I could not lie to KaiSa, who was now a demingod to ker people. “I don’t know. I do what I think is best, and I trust that VeiSaTi will approve. I trust that VeiSaTi wants me to help my people.”

Again the smile. “VeiSaTi’s intentions aren’t ours to know, O’Sa.” Ker voice chided me, softly. “We either obey or not, without understanding. We must trust Ker. Do you trust Ker, O’Sa?”

I started to answer, and KaiSa held up ker hand, ker head tilting. “You answer with your mind, not your heart,” ke told me. “Look deeper.”

I looked, and I could see within my body as if it were glass, and what was within me was not blood and organs, but lights and shades, and each meant something to me. Far within me, I saw the core of my beliefs, glowing softly green and gold. “Hai,” I told ker. “I do trust Ker.”

KaiSa’s gaze went sad, and I could feel the empathy welling from ker, enveloping me like the shimmering pearl radiance of VeiSaTi’s Great Shell. “What Ke asks of you now will require courage,” ke told me. “Do you have that courage?”

I looked within me again, at the darting blue, the sweeping red. “I have so little left here on Mictlan,” I told ker. “I am old, and all my lovers are dead, and I have done what I set out to do. What is there for me to be afraid of?”

Ke nodded, and fell into sparkling dust before me. VeiSaTi came to me then, in Ker full glory, and I saw the future Ke gave to me.

CONTEXT:

SaTu Terri of AnglSaiye

TERRI COULD HEAR THE WOMAN IN THE OTHER room, talking her poison. “… everything you knew and planned, Caitlyn, everything you told me, I was supposed to tell her. But I didn’t. Not everything. I swear it…” The Allen-Shimmura whore was pleading, but it was like the annoying whine of a snarl-fly in the SaTu’s ears, and ke walked into the room, knowing that ker presence would at least make her shut her mouth.

“Why do you bother to listen to this garbage, Caitlyn?” Terri demanded. Ke leaned against the archway leading into the Common Room, ker shangaa disheveled, ker white hair wild and stiff. “She’s an Allen-Shimmura. You can’t trust her. Everything she says about me is a lie.”

“She is not talking about you, SaTu,” Caitlyn said, but the expression of ker face told Terri that the bitch had already seduced ker. The Allen-Shimmura woman stared: a cold, unsympathetic face, Terri thought. The tears in her eyes were as false as her soul. There were accusations in her gaze: ke could see them, crawling around her like maggots.

“It’s all lies, I tell you!” Terri shouted at Caitlyn. “She doesn’t understand me. None of them can understand me.”

“SaTu, let’s get you to bed …” Caitlyn said it the way ke might have spoken to an acolyte who was having bad dreams.

“Damn it, don’t you be condescending to me!” Terri thundered. “I’m still the SaTu. VeiSaTi chose me to show Ker vision, and I will follow through with it. I tell you that I will make Ker vision real, and it doesn’t matter what lies they’re saying about me. I know I failed before, but they don’t understand. They can’t understand.”

“SaTu …” Caitlyn put ker hand around Terri’s arm, and Terri pulled away angrily.

“Don’t patronize me, and don’t think I can’t see what happened here.” Ke pointed at the Allen-Shimmura woman. “Just because you’ve fucked her doesn’t mean that she’s on your side. Didn’t you listen to any of your lessons, CaitlynSa? Are you so naive?”

“SaTu,” Caitlyn persisted, and Terri saw an anger in ker eyes now. Ker hand on Terri’s arm was insistent. “You’re tired, you’ve been through a terrible experience, and you need to rest some more. Please …”

Terri didn’t have the strength to resist. Ke allowed Caitlyn to guide ker back to ker room, and lay down on ker bed until Caitlyn shut the door. Then ke sat up again, the turmoil of thoughts in ker head not allowing ker to sleep. In the mirror on the dresser, ke could see kerself—an old, old Sa sitting on the edge of the bed, ker face still flushed with anger. Ke hardly recognized kerself—ke might as well have been looking at Taira.

Taira. The thought brought back images of ker death, of seeing ker eviscerated and dead on the ground, the blood pooling around ker, the earth drinking the thick redness like rain…

They would be telling Caitlyn about ker, all of the apostates here. They knew, and they would tell ker. But they didn’t understand. They didn’t believe in VeiSaTi. Not really. Not in the way Terri did. Terri had heard the voice of the god, but ke hadn’t fulfilled Ker vision yet. Because ke had failed, VeiSaTi had taken Taira and the FirstHand, had sent the QualiKa to kill them in front of Terri. This is the terror that awaits if you do not obey soon, VeiSaTi was saying to Terri. You’ve already failed me once, and this is your punishment.

Ke would not fail VeiSaTi. Not again. Ke thought ke had found the way, but it had all fallen apart somehow, even though ke’d entrusted Rashi with the truth. Somehow, Terri would find a new way to give Ker what Ke asked.

Terri hammered ker fists on ker thighs. “I will do it,” ke said aloud. “I will.”

The face in the mirror nodded back to ker.

VOICE:

RenSa

I SUPPOSE THAT I WAS LUCKY I WASN’T SIMPLY killed outright.

The QualiKa were as nervous and touchy as wingclaw parents guarding their nest. The two guards at the entrance to TeNon held their lansa pointed at my chest, and I could sense bows nocked and drawn, aimed at me from the heights to either side.

“I am RenSa, the FirstHand of AnglSaiye,” I told the guards again, for the fourth time. “I have come here to see CosTa.”

“CosTa is seeing no one,” they told me, also for the fourth time, with less patience than before. “Are you deaf or just stupid, Sa? Turn around and be glad that we let you leave with your life.”

“Ask her if she wishes to see me or not,” I persisted. “Don’t answer for your Ta. I am the FirstHand of the Sa, and I wouldn’t have come here unless my seeing her weren’t vital.” I took another step toward the guards, as I’d been doing, slowly, since I’d first been confronted. The tip of the nearest lansa was now within an arm’s length.

“She is not seeing anyone,” the guard answered again, exasperated.

“She is inside TeNon, though,” I persisted, gesturing toward the dark opening of the tomb and using the gesture to mask another shuffling half step.

His hesitation and the glance from the other guard told me that I was right, but they both tried to shrug simultaneously. “CosTa is wherever CosTa is,” one of them said. “And we’re finished talking with you, Sa.”

“I would agree with that,” I said. This time, I took a deliberate step toward the nearest guard. As I expected, he halfheartedly thrust his lansa in my direction, but I had already taken another, final deep step to the side of him, leading with my good arm. In one motion, I grasped the lansa shaft with my hands and used the energy of his thrust—twisting the lansa in his hands and stepping back across his front at the same time. My injured arm screamed at the sudden abuse, but the guard, toppled by his own momentum, went flying into his companion. As both of them went down, I quickly slid back into TeNon as arrows hissed and clattered against the carved stone columns flanking the entrance. I slammed the door shut and jammed the guard’s lansa between the columns to bar them, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder. I turned toward the torchlit, long passage leading into the tomb.

A male was standing three strides away, his lansa back in throwing position. I spoke with what I hoped was calm. “Never throw your weapon,” I told him. “If you miss, your enemy will use it against you.”

“I don’t miss. Ever,” he answered, but he didn’t throw, though the long muscles of his arm quivered.

“JairTe,” a deep, familiar voice came from the darkness beyond him. “Let ker pass.”

I hadn’t known that CosTa had named anyone as Te, but I bowed my head to him. There are no more TeTa, the O’Sa had said, but the titles are ingrained deeply in the CieTiLa, and if AnglSaiye Sa didn’t use them, we were the exception. Equality in rank was a nice pretense, but it was still just a pretense—even among the humans, from what I’d seen. “I’m sorry, Te,” I said to the ground, hoping he wouldn’t strike. “Forgive me for coming to you this way, but the guards left me no choice.”

JairTe didn’t turn away from me, but he lowered the spear. Behind me, the doors crashed open and clawed hands grabbed me; JairTe shook his head at the guards, who reluctantly let me go. The Te stood aside in the narrow corridor and gestured toward the interior. At the end of the passage, set deep in the heart of the hillside, I could see the column where NagTe’s remains rested, the room lit by what seemed to be hundreds of glittering torches. I walked toward the room, hearing JairTe fall into step behind me. The tomb was gorgeous, brilliant with crystalline mirrors, and atop the column I’d glimpsed from the entrance, a plain wooden box sat. CosTa sat to the left, the remnants of a meal on a low tray before her. Seeing her brought back the night I’d met her above Black Lake, and how equally frightening and attractive she had been. I felt that duality again now, as I stood before her.

“I can only imagine how this must look on NagTe’s deathday, with the sunset shining here,” I said. “It must be as splendid a sight as rumors have said.”

She smiled at that, a gentle smile. “It is,” CosTa answered, looking at the box holding her grandsire’s remains. Behind me, JairTe slipped into the room. He moved to stand to the right and just behind CosTa, protectively, almost jealously, and his hand went to her shoulder as he gave me a strange glance. CosTa glanced at me, appraisingly, her handsome face tilted. “RenSa,” she said, nodding, “I’m pleased to see you again. But why does the SecondHand of the Sa seek me out?”

“I’m the FirstHand now,” I answered. Something—a flicker of emotion—moved across JairTe’s face, and I knew something else, remembering the male with a lansa in YeiSa’s vision. I pointed to JairTe. “He knows. He killed YeiSa.”

JairTe tried, but he could not disguise the intake of breath or the way his claws emerged to grip CosTa’s shoulder, or the anguish in his face. He had done the murder, yes, but I could see that guilt stained his kahina because of it, a guilt that wouldn’t let him rest easily. “Be calm, Jair,” CosTa told him. “You only did as I asked. It wasn’t your fault—you know that I would not have called you my Te if I felt differently.” She took a sip of her kav and then set the cup back on the tray. The click of pottery against lacquer was loud in the room. “YeiSa’s death wasn’t something we looked for, nor was that of the SaTu,” she said to me. “VeiSaTi has given you Sight, but I hope Ke has also shown you that their deaths were… unfortunate. The QualiKa do not look to kill CieTiLa unless they directly oppose us, and we do not look to hurt the Sa, whom we need as much as anyone.”

I could see the trembling in JairTe’s face and hands, and I knew that what CosTa had said was the truth. YeiSa would have tried to protect the SaTu, and I could well imagine that JairTe had little choice but to kill ker or be killed himself. “I know that,” I said. “I also know that the QualiKa did not kill Fianya, our little human Sa.”

A glimmer almost of amusement passed over CosTa’s face. “That is something we’ve always known, RenSa. As I recall, I told you that myself above Black Lake, a turning of Chali ago.”

“And do you know who was responsible?”

CosTa nodded sadly, a motion almost too small to see. “I do. I knew it then.”

“You could have said so. You could have come forward with that information and maybe none of this recent bloodshed would have happened.”

A shiver. “The act was nothing that involved the QualiKa, FirstHand. It was a human matter. A Sa matter. Tell me, would I have been believed had I gone to them, or would the humans have instead held me for their own idea of justice?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I thought VeiSaTi was asking me to come here to find who had killed Fianya, but Ke showed it to me on the way. Now, I’m not certain why Ke sent me here. All I know is that this is where Ke wants me to be.”

“Then stay, FirstHand,” CosTa answered, and I saw JairTe, from behind, fix CosTa with a glance of surprise and irritation. “Stay as long as VeiSaTi wills it, under my protection.”

“CosTa, ke is here only to report back to the flatfaces,” JairTe said heatedly. “The FirstHand is nothing but a tongue to lick the SaTu’s ass.”

“If you believed what you just said, JairTe,” I answered carefully, “you wouldn’t be concerned with my presence. And you are. I know it. CosTa knows it.”

The Te bared his handclaws, but didn’t move. Lines curled around his seeing eyes, his mane bristling.

And CosTa laughed.

It was a melancholy laugh, laden with doubt and despair and guilt, and the sheer weight of the sound broke the tension between JairTe and me. JairTe turned to her, forgetting me for a moment in his concern for his lover. And I did the same.

“Jair, my sweetness,” CosTa said, “the Sa knows you as well as I do. A hand of terduva ago, DekTe and CaraTa were mad enough to think that they could control the Sa, and the Sa were mad enough to kill themselves rather than be controlled.” CosTa looked at me then. “I have the same madness,” she told me then, and what little amusement her voice still held drained from her. “I am Cha’akMongTi. I am QualiKaTa. And I would rather all CieTiLa die than have us live to be controlled by the humans.”

“I understand your feelings, Cha’akMongTi,” I told her, and I knew again that it was the truth, something I felt more deeply than I had believed possible. Every insult, spoken and unspoken, from the humans seemed to burn in me, every act of ignorance or blind superiority, every sideways glance of unreasoned fear or distaste. “I understand them very well.”

“Then let us sit down and talk, FirstHand Sa,” CosTa said to me, and waved toward the ground before her. “Be as a Sa who came to our lands on ker travels.” She showed me ker hands, claws hidden, and gave me the Sign of the Three. She smiled again, and I knew that I wanted to stay, wanted to be with her, wanted to be with her as a Sa.

I sat, and listened to the echoes her voice raised in my heart.

CONTEXT:

Gaspar Allen-Levin of the Rock

HIS STOMACH RUMBLED, SO LOUDLY THAT GASPAR thought that they’d alert the grumblers in the settlement ahead, and acid burned in the back of his throat. Gaspar swallowed the bile and checked the clip on his rifle, trying to ignore for a moment what might be about to happen.

The day had not started well. The two Sa had been standing in front of Old Bridge when Gaspar’s group had tried to cross the river. Caitlyn had held up ker hand, and Gerald Allen-Shimmura, at their head, laughed in response.

“Well, you Sa have better sources of information than I thought,” Gerald said. His piebald face glistened in the sunlight, arrogant. “I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t matter. This isn’t your business. Go back and nurse your SaTu, Caitlyn.”

“I know what you’ve been asked to do,” Caitlyn said. “And I know how you’re likely to interpret that request, Gerald. But your way of handling the problem isn’t going to solve it. All you’re going to do is raise the stakes.”

“Frankly, Sa, I think the stakes should be raised. We should wipe out the whole fucking lot of them. You know what?—doing that would actually ‘solve the problem.’ But Geema and the Elder Council won’t let me do it. This is the next best thing.”

“On AnglSaiye, we’ve managed to live together with the Miccail for decades now.”

“This isn’t AnglSaiye, is it? And your SaTu may have changed ker mind now about how peaceful and idyllic things are. In any case, you’ve already argued all this with the Council, and they’ve made their ruling. Now, move out of the way. We’ve got work to do.”

Gaspar thought that Gerald’s angry little speech had ended things. The Sa called Linden, with a sigh, stepped to one side of the bridge, touching Caitlyn’s arm. But Caitlyn didn’t move. Instead, ke looked at all of them. At Gaspar. “This is wrong,” ke persisted, ker gaze stopping at Gaspar’s face. “Council ruling or not, you know it’s wrong.” Ke continued to look at him, and Gaspar felt everyone’s else’s scrutiny on him as well.

“It’s survival,” Gerald answered for everyone, and Gas-par felt a strange relief as Caitlyn’s gaze moved back to Gerald. “Pure and simple. Now, move aside, Sa—or I’ll have you moved.”

“What about you, Gaspar?” Caitlyn called out to him, and Gaspar felt a flush rising to his cheeks as the others in the group turned looked again at him. “Do you agree with Gerald here? Don’t give me the goddamn rhetoric. Answer me with what you’re feeling. Is this right?”

“I…” Gaspar stammered, feeling the heat on his face. He was angry with Caitlyn for singling him out and placing him at the center of this, but he remembered the Gather night with ker, and ker sweet, soft lips … He shrugged. “I don’t really know. Don’t put this on me, Caitlyn. It wasn’t my decision to make.”

“It is,” ke insisted. “It is your decision. For each one of you.”

“All we’re doing is making sure there’s no QualiKa around here. That makes sense to me, after what they’ve done to us. After what they did to your SaTu, I’d think it would to you, too.”

“Do you really think that’s all that’s intended with this—’making sure there’s no QualiKa around’? Even if it were, do you think the Miccail are going to tell you who the QualiKa are, just because you ask politely?”

Had he been alone, Gaspar might have wavered, might have turned back to the Rock. As it was, he hesitated, hunching his shoulders under the pressure of everyone’s eyes. “I do what the Elders say, Caitlyn,” he answered, knowing he said the words because they were the easiest ones to parrot, because they shifted the blame away. “That’s all any of us can do.”

Caitlyn was shaking ker head, but they both knew that there were no more arguments to be made, and Linden was plucking at the sleeve of Caitlyn’s shangaa again. “I ask you, all of you: Don’t go,” Caitlyn persisted, but ker voice was fragile with hopelessness, and ker hand dropped to ker side. Gerald pushed past ker, and ke let him pass without protest.

“Let’s move,” Gerald called to the rest. “We’ll need all the sun we can get, and we’ve wasted enough time already.”

They went. Gaspar noticed that all the others avoided looking at the two Sa, but they all went. Gaspar was the last to move. As he passed Caitlyn, he lifted his face. “You understand?” he asked. “You don’t have to agree, don’t have to like it. But do you understand?”

Mutely, Caitlyn shook ker head in denial. The wind tossed ker hair in front of ker eyes, and ke lifted a hand to push it away again, not blinking as ke stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” Gaspar said, finally pulling himself away from that silent accusation. “I really am, Caitlyn.”

He shifted the weight of rifle and pack on his shoulders and hurried to catch up with the others.

The rest of the day had not gone any better. The wind was cold, and spatters of frigid sleet raked them the entire morning before the clouds thinned in the afternoon to allow through a few rays of wan sunlight. Lunch and dinner were cold meat and bread eaten while huddled around a small fire, and not enough time to rest. Gerald had them up again as the sun laid a rose tint on the clouds to the east. By midday, they marched into a small grumbler village.

The Te and Ta came out to meet them as faces peered from the doorways of the six or seven wooden dwellings. The Te was a small grumbler, his spinal mane gray with age; the Ta looked to be his daughter, and she stepped forward as spokesperson, speaking haltingly in the human language. “Welcome,” she said, but the skittish movement of her eyes and the way the tips of her claws were exposed belied the word. “I am HarTa; this is my …” She seemed to look for the word at her feet before finding it. “… father, LiriTe.” She glanced at each of them, and Gaspar felt like hiding from the apprehensive query of her gaze. “You are from Black Lake—I comprehend … no, recognize some of you. You are … passing through? Hunting? We can offer you, ahh, water, and the XeXa can describe … no, show you where nik-niks …”

“We’re hunting, hai,” Gerald said, interrupting her as he hefted his rifle. “But not nik-niks. QualiKa.”

Something changed in her eyes then, Gaspar saw. They grew hard and suspicious and distant, and the Sun’s Eye, the brais, went dull. “There are no QualiKa here,” she said, but her voice was harsher now and harder to understand, her tongues slurring the consonants. Gerald laughed, and others around Gaspar did the same.

“Right,” Gerald said. “And the sun won’t be coming up tomorrow.”

“The sun…?” the grumbler Ta said, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. All you need to do is point out the QualiKa you have staying here.”

She was shaking her head now, holding both hands to her temples. “You speak … too fast for me. Can’t understand …”

There was a burst of grumbler-talk from the Te then, and the Ta turned to answer him, speaking rapidly and gesticulating back toward the group of humans. It sounded like verrechats hissing at each other to Gaspar.

“What are they saying?” Gaspar asked Gerald.

Gerald shrugged. “Anyone here know grumbler?” When no one answered, Gerald swung back around and fired his rifle once in the air. The Te and Ta went silent in mid-yammer. “Hey!” Gerald shouted. “You can fucking talk to us. No more of this grumbler khudda. Understand?”

There was fright in the Ta’s gaze now, and anger. “I was … explaining my father… how you said …”

“Shut up!” Gerald roared. “We want the QualiKa you’re holding. We want them now.”

Again the stubborn head shake. “No QualiKa,” the Ta repeated. “Not here.”

Gerald snorted. “I doubt that. Maybe you’re even one yourself, eh? Maybe you have one of those moon tattoos. Let’s just see…” He reached toward her, the fingers of his free left hand curling around the collar of her shangaa. The Te howled in outrage that needed no words or no language to understand and started to move. With a strange, calm look on his face, Gerald lifted his rifle with other hand, held it out at arm’s length, and shot the Te in the face. Before the sound even registered, Gaspar saw the Te reel backward one step and collapse, his features a bloody ruin. Gerald hadn’t even looked. He tugged the Ta’s shangaa down, ripping the cloth and revealing her small breasts. “Well,” he said, chuckling. “I guess I was wro—”

Which was when it all went to hell. The Ta raked her claws down Gerald’s face, ripping three great furrows from scalp to chin. “Fuck! Khudda! You goddamn bitch!” Gerald screamed, the words sibilant with blood and the open flaps torn from his cheeks. He staggered away from her, blood streaming over the fingers holding the raw strips of flesh to his face.

His mouth open in a soundless scream, Gerald lifted his rifle and pressed the trigger once, then again and again and again. The Ta was dead with the first shot, but Gerald continued to fire into her body. A grumbler started to rush from one of the houses with a spear—another one of the group killed him before he’d moved two steps. Someone else fired to Gaspar’s right, and then another, the concussions hammering at him. Adrenaline surged; Gaspar had to fight the impulse to simply turn and run from the carnage, and he felt his bowels turn to water. Grumblers were howling and squealing all around them, Gerald was still emptying his rifle into the body of the Ta, the rest of the group was shouting and cursing as they fired wildly. The smell of gunpowder and death was overpowering.

Gaspar heard a sound behind him: running footsteps. He turned swiftly, shouting some wordless alarm as he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and fired at the blur of movement. Something … some form … dropped to the ground two steps in front of him. Gaspar leaned forward, still cursing, as he squinted at it.

It was a grumbler child, no more than a few years old, no older than his nephew Abbie or most of his sib Arlin’s children back at the Rock. Its life was pumping out of a red hole in its chest onto the cold, dusty earth, and its open eyes stared: a dead gaze, focused on the stones in front of it, but the eyes transfixed him with a silent accusation. Behind him, half-heard, there were more shouts, more shots being fired and screams both human and grumbler, but Gaspar reacted to none of it. He was still holding the rifle up to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel at the child. Little details came to him: the tendrils of gray-white steam curling gently off the suddenly heated barrel of his weapon, the sullen ache in his shoulder from the kick of the gun, the ringing in his ears from the report, the tiny hands of the grumbler child, empty, outflung on the dirt.

The eyes. The child’s eyes.

VOICE:

Ishiko Allen-Shimmura of the Rock

NOT LONG AFTER GERALD AND HIS GROUP LEFT the Rock, Aleppo Martinez-Santos arrived breathless from Warm Water with the tale of finding a smoldering funeral pyre just off the highroad, a pyre that indicated that the person who had been cremated was a Sa. Aleppo hadn’t disturbed the site—from what I was told, the sight spooked Aleppo and he was afraid of lurking kami. Instead, he’d hurried on to the Rock. From there, things happened rapidly: Shotoku Martinez-Santos, that Family’s Eldest on the Rock, had immediately sent word to Caitlyn and Linden at the Koda-Levin compound. I think that they would have preferred to investigate on their own, but there are no secrets in the Rock, as their O’Sa Anaïs would have once told them.

Word had also come to our Family compound, through one of the younger sib’s lovers. When Geema Euzhan learned that the two Sa were making plans to leave the Rock and investigate, she had sent word to them that she would “give” them a contingent from the Rock Families to accompany them “for their protection.’

Caitlyn’s answer surprised her, I think. It surprised me, certainly. While declining the “protection” offered them, ke suggested that I accompany them instead, as the Rock’s representative. I was called to Geema Euzhan’s rooms immediately. “Why does ke want you?” she asked me immediately, without any preamble.

It was very nearly the first thing she’d said to me since our argument two nights before. I assumed she knew—through her usual grapevine—that I’d gone to the Koda-Levin compound afterward. But though she’d ignored me since then, she also hadn’t asked me what had happened in the several hours I’d been there or what I’d said.

That was good. I wasn’t sure how I would have answered. Geema, I told Caitlyn everything—told ker how I was supposed to report back to you what the Sa were thinking and doing and what they knew, and how I didn’t do it. Hai, you heard me right, Geema—I wasn’t quite the fount of information you’d thought. And Geema, no, I didn’t go to bed with ker again, but not because ke’s a Sa and you don’t want our Family “contaminated” with Sa seed. It was because I don’t know if that’s something ke wants anymore. That’s all. If Caitlyn had asked or if ke had indicated any interest… well, I might have. I don’t know. Geema, I think I may love ker more than I love you, and I hate you for having ruined that possibility for me.

“Have you gone deaf, girl? I asked you a question.”

“I heard you, Geema. And I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Caitlyn?”

“I thought you said ke suspected what you’d done and wasn’t speaking to you anymore.”

I shrugged.

“That’s changed since you went and saw ker the other night?”

Hai. The grapevine at work. Geema knew. Geema always knew. Still, in the end, she grudgingly agreed to let me go with them. I suppose she figured that this was nothing really important—which translates to “nothing that would directly affect her or the Rock.” That was Geema’s sole definition of “important.”

It didn’t matter who else things might hurt.

So I went…

“This is it,” Caitlyn said. “Through here.”

Ke held aside the thorn-vines so that Linden and I could pass through. We could see the blackened area a few meters beyond. The odor of woodsmoke still hung in the drooping amberdrops, their trunks streaked with sticky yellow where the heat had melted the sap.

As I stepped off the highroad, I glanced back at the rising land behind me. We’d all noticed that the hillside where Fianya had died was only a few minutes’ walk off the other side of the road, though none of us had bothered to mention the fact aloud. I ducked under the thorn-vines and Cailtyn’s arm, following Linden.

The smell of old smoke was stronger in the clearing just beyond, and it was mingled with another scent, one I knew well from the funerary burnings I’d witnessed over the years. In the pile of ash at the glade’s center, there were sprinklings of charred bone.

“Over here,” Linden said. Ke was standing next to a large shallow bowl shaped like a shell that was placed atop a tripod of carved wooden legs. Linden had lifted a shangaa from the bowl. “Gods, this thing reeks!” The shangaa was orange—the Sa color—and large. I saw that much before Linden dropped it back with a scowl, ker nose wrinkled with disgust.

“Rashi,” Caitlyn said. “This was poor Rashi. Damn …” Ke glanced around the clearing. A shangaa’s cloth belt hung from a stout tree limb above ker, the end of it knotted into a noose. The Sa’s pouch was lying near the tripod. Caitlyn crouched down, looking at the patches of open ground. I saw what ke was searching for: The prints of a naked foot were pressed in the ice-glazed earth—a grumbler’s foot.

Caitlyn glanced at Linden. “RenSa?” Linden shrugged. “By the smell of ker shangaa, Rashi had been dead for a long time. The pyre was built no more than two days ago. The timing’s about right for RenSa to have done it. If ke came across the body, ke would have performed the Burning for ker.”

“Why wouldn’t RenSa have come back and told us?” Linden asked. “And did Rashi kill kerself, or was ke murdered? Did RenSa know ke was out here? And why would Rashi be lugging around one of the big altars? Ke was supposed to be in Warm Water, and should have taken one of the small traveling ones.”

“Too many questions, and none of them have answers. At least not at the moment.” Caitlyn was looking at the noose again. “Rashi was always SaTu Terri’s favorite,” ke said, softly. “What happened here?”

I barely heard ker. Through the tops of the trees, I could see the crown of the hill where Fianya had died, still patchy with snow, and I remembered RenSa and Linden afterward describing the cave in which the Sa child had been kept. I went over to where Linden was standing by the altar. Linden watched me curiously while I lifted the shell-bowl from the stand, set it aside, and moved the stand. Where it had been, three shallow indentations pocked the ground. Linden looked at me, then down.

“Khudda!” He breathed the curse, looking at me again. “No…” he moaned, as Caitlyn came over.

“Linden?” ke asked, ker hand on the other Sa’s shoulder. I noticed that ke stood well away from me, so we couldn’t accidentally touch. Linden glanced at me again, then picked up the tripod, collapsing the wooden legs, which fell together with a harsh clack.

“Let’s walk a bit,” Linden said. “We’ve seen enough here.” Carrying the tripod mechanism, ke started walking back out of the clearing. Caitlyn cocked ker head, brushing ker hair behind ker ear with ker left hand. I watched ker fingers, graceful as mine could never be.

“What did you show ker?” ke asked.

“Nothing,” I answered. “Or maybe everything. Caitlyn, I…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, but there was too much. “Just…” I took a breath. “… follow ker,” I finished.

We went across the road and up the hill. Linden strode ahead, almost angrily, not looking back. Caitlyn said nothing as we went up the long hill, and turned to where the small cave opened dark in the tumble of rocks at the summit. When Caitlyn and I entered, Linden was already there, unfolding the legs of the tripod next to the remains of the fire. Ke pointed at three small marks in the ground.

“These were here when RenSa and I first entered the cave,” ke said. Unfolding the tripod again, he lowered it gently to the dirt floor.

The legs of the tripod snuggled perfectly into the hollows.

“Whoever kidnapped Fianya couldn’t return ker,” I said slowly, looking at the tripod rather than either of the two Sa with me. “They didn’t want to return ker. That was never their intention. Fianya ran away because ke was scared—ke tripped and fell to ker death. But ke would have been dead anyway. Whoever brought ker here did so to kill ker.” I looked again at the tripod sitting in front of us; at the two Sa who stood there, not wanting to understand the import of what they were seeing. I could see the pain in Caitlyn’s face, and I wanted to go to ker. Instead, I said the words in all of our minds.

“After all, what would the Cha’akMongTi have done with Fianya, if she was the one who ordered Fianya to be taken? What would it gain the QualiKa to kidnap a human Sa child? Nothing. For that matter, why would Geema Euzhan or someone in my Family have done it, since Geema had already refused the SaTu’s demands to send Fianya to AnglSaiye?”

I looked again at the tripod, and I shuddered.

“It’s the Sa who perform sacrifices,” I said. “It’s the Sa who have even sacrificed their own.” I could imagine the scene: the altar set up here by the small fire, poor Fianya looking at the axe, the garrote, and the water as Rashi reached for ker …

Linden moaned. I saw Caitlyn shudder with the words and clutch kerself, hands to shoulders. “Why would Rashi …?” ke began.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But I know how I would have felt after Fianya died, accidentally or not. I might have been tempted to hang myself, too.”

Caitlyn whirled around to face me, ker face suffused with anger. “This is all still wild speculation,” ke said heatedly.

I nodded. “Hai. But it’s what you’re both thinking, too, isn’t it?”

Caitlyn didn’t answer. Ke brushed past me, going out of the cave into the chill air. Linden was leaning against the rock wall, ker gaze still on the tripod. “Go to ker,” ke said without looking at me. “Ke needs you right now.”

“Linden…”

“Go on. I’m fine. Well, not fine, actually, but…” Ke gave me a wan smile. “Go on.”

I went, blinking into the sunlight. I saw Caitlyn well down the slope, standing at the edge of the precipice over which Fianya had fallen. I approached ker, moving carefully over the loose rocks and patches of ice. The wind was tossing ker hair and pressing ker shangaa tight against ker body. “Caitlyn?”

“It’s true,” ke said, without turning around. “I know it’s true. Everything you said.”

“Caitlyn, would you please step back a little? You’re making me very nervous.”

Ke ignored me. Ker booted feet, shifting, sent small rocks tumbling over the edge of the cliff. I could hear them bounding down to the rocks where Fianya had died. “Caitlyn, please …” I could hear panic beginning to shiver in my voice.

“We started this. All the bloodshed. A Sa started it. Why? By VeiSaTi Kerself, why?” The wind nearly tore ker words away. I wondered whether I should make a grab for ker. I wondered whether ker shangaa would hold if ke fell, or if I would fall with ker. I wondered whether I could move at all.

Caitlyn turned, and took a step toward me, away from the cliff. A single tear was tracking down ker cheek, glistening.

“I’m sorry,” ke said to me. “Ishiko, I’m so sorry.”

CONTEXT:

Ghost

“YOU DON’T THINK ANY OF THIS PREJUDICE YOU carry around with you stems from being attacked by a Miccail when you were a child?”

Ghost wore the shape of Sigmund Freud, and he’d even projected a couch on which “he” reclined as he spoke, a long, fat cigar snared between his fingers. He doubted that Euzhan would understand the visual reference, or particularly appreciate it if she did. No one much seemed to comprehend the shapes he wore, but Ghost wore them anyway, because doing so amused him. Being a construct, “amusement” wasn’t precisely the right term, but it was a close approximation for the exhilarating openness of the neural web, the crackle of new pathways and unexpected interconnections.

Ghost/Sigmund stretched his legs on the couch, looked up at the ceiling and exhaled a cloud of holographic smoke. “All that happened over a century ago, Euzhan. You’re the only one alive who even remembers it.”

“This psychological khudda is wasting our limited time, Ghost,” Euzhan snapped. Her exhalation made a fog on the windowpane of her study. She wasn’t looking at him, but out to the wide pathway leading from the Rock to the river.

He ignored her rebuke—Ghost’s programming could make him maddeningly obstinate with the people with whom he interacted, but experience had taught Ghost that this was a way to extract the maximum amount of information from recalcitrant subjects.

“Ahh, but psychology is what underlies everything with humans, where we find meaning and insight into the way we think. Take my cigar—such an obvious phallic symbol.” What Ghost twirled between his fingers was no longer a cigar but an erect penis, with curls of bluish smoke emerging from the mushroom-headed tip.

“Damn it, Ghost…” Euzhan’s voice was shrill with exasperation as she turned to regard him. “You are making far more of this than you need to. It’s very simple: My job is to do what I must to ensure the survival of the Families. The grumblers are a threat to that, and I am dealing with them as such. I don’t like it, don’t like it at all, but I think it’s the best choice to ensure that the Families live and thrive. Beyond that, there’s no hidden agendas here.”

“If that’s your intent, then why do you persist in keeping your Family away from the Sa?” Ghost grinned at her, deliberately, knowing the smile would be an additional goad. He let the couch and Freud’s image dissolve, morphing into the shape of an elderly man he knew Euzhan would recognize all too well: her long-dead Geeda Dominic.

Ghost/Dominic addressed the glowing tip of his cigar. “Don’t you just love inconsistencies? Personally, I think it has to do with the fact that the child Euzhan regarded Anaïs as a mother-substitute, and she subconsciously has never forgiven Anaïs for not taking her to AnglSaiye even though she knows it was her Geeda Dominic who refused to let—”

“Shut up, Ghost!” Euzhan’s voice nearly broke with the half shout. The cheeks of her too-smooth face burned red, and hard lines frowned over and around her eyes. She banged the end of her cane—Dominic’s cane, Ghost noticed with something akin to pleasure—on the floor. “My feelings toward the Sa have nothing to do with Anaïs, and I don’t need to defend myself to you.”

Dominic’s image shifted, becoming those of Anaïs Koda-Levin, as she’d looked before she’d been exiled from the Rock by Dominic and the other Elders of the time. The cigar still smoked in ker fingers. “When you breed with the Sa, you dramatically increase the chance of pregnancy and lessen the incidence of genetic defects. That seems like a good strategy to—how did you just put it?—’ensure the survival of the Families.’”

“When we breed with the Sa, we are no longer human.”

“So the Miccail and the Sa are pretty much one and the same for you: not human.”

“I don’t have time for this, Ghost. I’ve made my decisions, and I’m as comfortable as I can be with them. As to what’s happening with the grumblers…” Euzhan shook her head, her whole upper body moving with the motion. “I’ve lived longer in this world than anyone except you, Ghost, so give me credit for some understanding of how things work. Anaïs gave the grumblers back their Sa and helped them rediscover their culture, and she died trying to mediate between our two species. We both want the same land.”

“It’s a damn big world.”

“And we know we can survive here in it. Here. We don’t know whether that would be true anywhere else. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary. Let the grumblers leave if they can’t stand being here with us.” Euzhan sighed. “Ghost, I know how this sounds. I honestly do, and I don’t like what I’m saying any more than do you or the Sa. But I don’t have any confidence that we can share the land together. We’re a few hundred; they are thousands. The one truth is that there are enough grumblers out there that if they decided to kill us all, no matter how well and better armed we are, they could overrun us with sheer force of numbers. If CosTa has her way, that’s exactly what will happen. I don’t condone genocide, but if I have to choose between the survival of my people or theirs…” She inhaled: slowly, deeply. “Well, I know where my loyalties lie.”

“In that, your loyalties are the same as mine,” Ghost answered. “My one imperative, my own pursuit, is your survival. Period.” All the humor was gone from ker voice now. Ghost let the image of Anaïs fall from ker. The cigar fell from ker fingers and vanished before it hit the floor She became a mirror of Euzhan herself.

“Then why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?”

“Because I don’t have much time,” Ghost answered in Euzhan’s own voice. Deep in the neural web, there was a throbbing as pathways opened and closed. Possibilities, none of them pleasant, surged before her. “And I have my own decisions to ma—”

“Geema!” Nawal Allen-Shimmura burst into the room without knocking, then pulled up short, looking from Ghost/Euzhan to the real Euzhan. “It’s da Gerald,” the young woman said frantically to both of them. “The group you sent out just came back, and he’s hurt badly …”

JOURNAL ENTRY:

Anaïs Koda-Levin, O’Sa

OUR LITTLE DELEGATION—HALF-HUMAN, HALF-Miccail—stayed the night at a wayhouse a half day’s konja-ride from Hannibal. While the others fixed supper, my FirstHand NefSa came from the wayhouse and found me, sitting on a rock near a creek rushing to its confluence with the Loud River. The sound of the water was soothing, a lovely white noise that made meditation easy.

“O’Sa,” NefSa said softly. “Supper’s nearly ready.”

“Thanks, NefSa. I’ll be there.” As ke started to turn, I called to ker without turning around, still watching the foaming cascade in front of me. “I’ve come to a decision. I would like you to be the next SaTu.”

I heard NefSa pause, heard ker feet scuffle on the fallen leaves. NefSa was the youngest of that first spurt of Miccail Sa I’d helped birth in those first years on AnglSaiye, and ke was now the oldest of the Miccail Sa. A half dozen Miccail Sa had been born within as many years, as if they’d just been waiting for the right time after long centuries of slumber. At fifty-three, NefSa was old for a Miccail, ker spinal mane stark white, ker skin wrinkled into deep folds on ker long face. Ke had been with me for all that time, helping build the Community of Sa, forging our new KoPavi. I thought I knew ker well, but ke surprised me then. “You are not going to die,” I thought ke might say. “You will be SaTu for years yet, O’Sa.” I expected platitudes.

Pleasant lies. Ones that I would have made to someone else without thought.

“It’s good for you to think about who will come after you, especially now,” NefSa answered. “But no Miccail can ever be SaTu.” Ker voice chided me gently. “Surely you realize that.”

“Why not?” I said it with genuine bewilderment. I turned away from the creek, looking into ker quiet regard.

“For the same reason that you did not put yourself under the direction of the CieTiLa sages on AnglSaiye. For the same reason those sages named you SaTu when the Temple was reopened.” NefSa touched ker brais, ker face, and held out ker hands to me. “Because we CieTiLa are different than you humans, and your people do not like ‘different’ well enough to follow it. Because—” ke continued, holding up ker hand to stop the protest I was about to make—"we both want our Community to thrive and become strong, and if you name me as SaTu, you will have undone all the progress you’ve made, whether you want to believe that or not. The only reason we CieTiLa did not kill all the humans when you first came was because most of us were half-wild, with no organization. That is why your people survived. Then you, O’Sa, brought back the Sa to us and fulfilled the promise of the Sa Beneath The Water, and we could not harm those who had done that. On AnglSaiye, we even lived together, and you and those of the Families who came brought us back from our long darkness, so when some whispered that we should rid the land of humans and take back what was ours, the TeTa said ‘no.’”

“That seems to me to be all the more reason for you to be SaTu, to show the trust between our people.”

NefSa shivered. “O’Sa…” Ke took a breath. “Name me as SaTu, and your Families will stop listening to the Sa. They will mock the Community, they will stop welcoming the Sa when they come. A few humans will leave AnglSaiye because the island is now run by ‘grumblers,’ and then the rest will follow. Your Families will attack the Community of Sa with their words and perhaps with their actions, and when they do that, to us it will be an attack on all CieTiLa and our customs. Eventually, the TeTa will begin to wonder if the QualiKa are not right, and then …” NefSa stopped. “There are so many of us, O’Sa, no matter how powerful your weapons and your machines may be.”

“NefSa…” I truly didn’t know what to say. “I think you’re exaggerating.”

“I know some of your people’s history, O’Sa,” NefSa answered. “It would seem that ‘differences’—in religion, in political beliefs, in skin color—have fueled most of your conflicts.”

“Once that may have been true. But we came here in a ship built by all countries, crewed by all races and religions.” And I know from Ghost how difficult that was to accomplish, and I know that when we arrived here, after decades of travel, the crew could never recontact Earth, and many of them worried that another war might have broken out there … But I didn’t say any of that.

“Then look at more recent examples. Tell me, then, O’Sa—how did your own people react to you?”

To that, I had no answer: I carried the scars, both physical and emotional, of the treatment I’d received from the Families. I know I sat there for a moment, mouth open, without answering. Then I shook my head stubbornly. “We change, NefSa. We grow.”

Platitudes.

Ke bared ker lips in the Miccail smile that I always thought looked more like a grimace. “Then wait until your people have changed enough. That is not now. Maybe it will be never. Name Gonzalo of the Allen-Levins as the next SaTu; I will be ker FirstHand, as I am yours.” Ke held out a hand to help me up. “O’Sa, supper is waiting, and tomorrow will be a difficult day.”

Perhaps I should have continued the argument. Perhaps I should have insisted. I didn’t.

I reached out for NefSa’s hand and let ker help me to my feet.

VOICE:

Caitlyn Koda-Schmidt of the Sa

“RASHI IS DEAD?”

SaTu Terri kept repeating that over and over as if ker wondering mantra could force reality to take a new shape. “Hai, SaTu,” I said again. “Rashi is dead. SaTu, please listen to me. I also told you that Linden and I believe Rashi was responsible for taking Fianya from the Allen-Shimmuras. We need to discuss that.”

“Rashi is dead?” Terri looked like an acolyte puzzling over homework given to ker by ker teachers, ker white hair curtaining ker face as ke shook ker head. Terri’s lone order to the runner we’d dispatched to AnglSaiye after finding ker was to bring back the translations of the KoPavi on which ke’d been working. They’d arrived yesterday. The sheets of parchment were spread out in front of ker now, drifted across ker desk like great piles of dry leaves, scattered over the coverlet of ker bed. Ke was holding one of the sheets as we spoke, the paper trembling in ker fingers.

The paper slipped from ker grasp, careening from side to side until it came to rest on the desktop.

“Hai, SaTu,” I tried again. “But we need to know what you want said to Euzhan about Fianya. She’s already upset over what’s happened with Gerald, and we have to assume that word has gone out to the QualiKa as well. I’m afraid—”

“Rashi was obedient to VeiSaTi and to me,” Terri said. A gnarled, long finger tapped the papers in front of ker. “Ke believed in this KoPavi as I did—the proper KoPavi. Ke sacrificed, and VeiSaTi spoke to and through ker. I would have named ker SaTu after me.” Terri glanced up at me, ker eyes narrowed and ker thin mouth tight. “Ker obedience to me was unquestioned.”

“No doubt, SaTu,” I said wearily. “But Rashi’s dead, and we need to deal with the repercussions.”

“When we last spoke, Rashi said that ke would do what VeiSaTi asked. VeiSaTi wouldn’t have allowed ker to die. We need to follow the KoPavi. We need to sacrifice. The visions I have been granted…” Terri was breathing fast and shallow, and ker eyes flicked wildly around the room. “The time that is on us is as dangerous as that of the Sa Beneath The Water, and we must give no less than ke did.”

I was tired of arguing, of going around in useless circles with someone whose grip on reality—never particularly strong, in my opinion—was now rather tenuous. I could see that we needed to get SaTu Terri back to AnglSaiye; we needed to convene the Advisory Council, who could make a judgment as to Tern’s competency as SaTu.

Another crisis among the others piling up around us. “Hai, SaTu,” I said, unwilling to stay any longer. “SaTu, we need to leave now. We need to go back to AnglSaiye.”

“We can’t leave yet. We must sacrifice. VeiSaTi will tell us what we must do.”

“We don’t have time for that, SaTu.”

“That’s the only way. That’s the KoPavi. We must give Ker the sacrifice she has asked for, what I failed to give Ker.”

“SaTu—”

Terri waved me away, ker head on ker forehead as ke stared blankly at the translations on ker desk. I left the room, pulling the door closed, and went to the Common Room. Linden was there with Ishiko, who was just taking off her coat in front of the fireplace. “Any luck?” Linden asked.

I gave them both a shrug. “No,” I told ker. “Ke just keeps saying ke can’t believe Rashi’s dead. I can’t get anything more from ker. How were things with the Families, Ishiko?”

“Bad,” she said. “Evidently Gerald’s wounds are serious. Da Cuauh’s told Euzhan that even if Gerald makes it, he’s going to be badly disfigured. The grumbler nearly tore his face off. Geema’s already had the entire Elder Council up to her rooms, one at a time, and my sibs are saying that she’s trying to convince them that the Miccail are too dangerous to tolerate. I don’t know how much support she’s been able to drum up, but other Families have had people injured, too. I think there’s more sympathy for Geema’s view than is comfortable for us.”

For us. I heard that and wondered if she really meant the words. I wanted to believe she did. “What did you tell her about Rashi?”

Ishiko shrugged. She lifted her right hand; her left, as usual, stayed hidden in her jacket pocket. “I told her that the cremated body was almost certainly Rashi, and that it looked to be suicide.”

“And the rest?”

Ishiko gave another shrug. “We don’t know any of it for certain, do we? To tell you the truth, Geema hardly listened to me at all. She hasn’t any time for anything but Gerald right now and doesn’t think the suicide of a Sa is worth her consideration. ‘You can tell them that I’m sorry, if you think they’ll believe it of me’ is what she said. As for the speculation about Fianya …” Ishiko gave a shrug that mirrored my own of a moment ago. “That’s all it is, anyway: speculation.”

“Is that what you think?”

Ishiko lifted her chin, staring at me. “No,” she said. “I think Rashi was planning kill Fianya, even if ke hadn’t died trying to get away. I don’t know why, but I think all three of us believe that’s what ke intended.”

“That must make you hate the Sa.”

Small muscles knotted her eyebrows. “It would if I were like some in my Family, Caitlyn. But I’m not. I don’t make the mistake of blaming an entire group for the acts of one.” She was still holding my gaze. Behind her, Linden slid silently out of the room, leaving us alone. The fire discovered a moist pocket in the peat bricks; they hissed, then popped in a flurry of sparks. I used the excuse to break Ishiko’s stare, going over to the massive fireplace and prodding the coals with the poker. I could feel her watching me, her gaze a palpable pressure on my back. “So what about me, Caitlyn,” she asked. “Are you going to hate me for the sins of my Family?”

I impaled coals on the lance of my poker. “I don’t hate you, Ishiko. You’ve done nothing to make me feel that way about you. But you were avoiding me, up until a few days ago. You were clear about how you felt.” I still hadn’t looked at her. I couldn’t look at her. I put the poker back into the holder, listening to the harsh clatter of iron on iron.

“When I came here after we found the SaTu, Caitlyn, when I told you how I’d been supposed to be Geema’s conduit to you and Linden, I saw your face. I saw you close yourself off to me.”

“You saw me dealing with SaTu Terri. That was all.”

Ishiko shook her head into my denial. “My interest in you was supposed to be a lie, Caitlyn, but it wasn’t. Not completely, and not at all when we made love. Not even from the first night at the Gather—I knew that quickly that I couldn’t pretend with you, that I didn’t want to. I’m sorry that any of it was a deception, but I thought you deserved to know the truth. I didn’t want to hurt you, Caitlyn, and I did. I thought… after I told you what I’d done …” She’d stopped speaking. I turned and saw her silently crying, her eyes closed. When they opened again, twin glistening pearls fell from her lashes.

“Ishiko—” I started toward her, but she held up her right hand.

“Don’t,” she said. She rubbed at her eyes angrily with her jacket sleeve and shook her head. “Please don’t,” she said again. “It’s late, and I need to get back to my Family.” She pulled her coat from the wall hook and put it on. “Caitlyn, I…”

I don’t know what she intended to say. Ishiko grimaced and turned before I could react, striding quickly toward the corridor that led to the compound’s entrance. She was gone before I could think of words that might make her stay. Before I realized that was what I most wanted.

I heard the door open and then close. A few seconds later, a cold draft welled from the corridor to shiver the flames in the fireplace.

VOICE:

RenSa

IT WAS A BRUTAL DAY. A COLD WIND BLEW RElentlessly from the north, tearing strings of pale orange snow from the massed clouds overhead. The cold flakes slapped at my face, hissing past my ears as they fell and making me cover my brais with one hand in defense. I shivered, even with a meatfur cloak over my shangaa, and I could feel the insistent earth-chill through the soles of my feet.

CosTa didn’t seem to be touched by any of it. She stood before the entrance to TeNon, at the top of the stairs leading to the tomb, the wind whipping her shangaa and flakes of snow caught in her spinal mane. Hands at her sides, she surveyed the ranks of CieTiLa before her. Many, probably most, were QualiKa, but not all. In the three days since news had come to us of the carnage at LiriTe and HarTa’s village near Black Lake, they’d been coming here, a hand or so of them at a time. The valley of TeNon was filled with tents and makeshift shelters, and the pall of campfires drifted like morning fog among the trees.

They were waiting, all of them. Waiting for CosTa to make her appearance.

I’d gone out among them, these new disciples, and felt the tension, like the uneasy anticipation that comes just before the breaking of a storm. “Have the Sa joined the QualiKa, then?” they asked me. “Are you with us?” “No,” I would reply, and that simple, unadorned answer seemed to satisfy them, though I wasn’t sure it satisfied me. In three days, I’d come to know CosTa better.

I’d come, I think, to know her too well. “Be as a Sa who came to our lands on ker travels,” she’d said to me, and I had known what she asked, and I had given that gift to her: gladly, willingly.

It’s difficult unreservedly to hate a person with whom you’ve made love, to detest them even when they say things you find completely wrong, when their actions tear at your soul and beliefs. In passion, pretenses are ripped away, and the mask of distance can never be completely put on again. You’ve seen their naked vulnerabilities displayed and they, in turn, have seen yours. However faint, that remembrance blunts your anger.

You can’t demonize someone you understand.

We Sa are taught that painful lesson over and over again, first by our teachers on AnglSaiye, then by our own experience. Our sacred duty compels us to share intimacy with those we might prefer to avoid, and that is painful enough. But duty also can compel us to leave those with whom we might wish to remain, and that… that is true agony.

I thought, when that first night CosTa asked if I would perform the Sa duty with her and JairTe, that it would be simply duty, nothing more—another night where I lay between two people and felt the seed pass through me without being touched or affected by the intercourse. Not this time. Sometime during that first night, all the barriers of title and duty vanished unasked, and we found that the people behind those walls responded to each other with a hunger that was almost frightening in its intensity.

I hadn’t known I desired intimacy—it’s something that Sa are taught to avoid. I hadn’t known I was holding back so much of myself. If I could, I would stay here with CosTa and JairTe. I might hate the Cha’akMongTi and what the QualiKa represent, but not the person who wields that title. No.

On this cold morning, JairTe came from the TeNon and stood beside me. He shivered, also. I was fairly certain that I’d given CosTa a child through JairTe in these last few days. He gave me a brief smile, almost as cold as the wind. “I don’t know how she can stand there so composed, with this wind,” I whispered to him.

“The affection of her people keeps her warm,” he answered stiffly, and I knew it was true. CosTa basked in the heat of their gazes as the multitude gathered at the base of TeNon. “And she has the fire of GhazTi inside her.”

That may also have been true. When the messenger had come with word of the incident near Black Lake, CosTa had left us and gone into solitude in the main chamber of the TeNon. I had smelled the bitter odor of jitu brewing, and I had heard her call out her grandfather’s name… I wondered what it would feel like to be one with GhazTi. Where VeiSaTi was warmth, GhazTi was a burning conflagration. Where Ker touch was gentle, His was reputed to be harsh and cruel.

It was no wonder that DekTe and CaraTa, who had together destroyed the Sa and thus nearly all the CieTiLa terduva ago, had worshiped GhazTi.

A chant began somewhere at the front of the crowd—"Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo!” The chant swelled rhythmically, until they were all shouting the words, the roar shaking more snow from the clouds and causing me to shudder. “Warrior of our Spirit” they named her, and I knew that any hope of peace had faded. Part of me yearned to shout it as well, to join in the booming thunder of the chant. “Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo!"—the words slammed against our chests, pummeled the doors of TeNon, but through the assault of noise CosTa stood, impassive, her face betraying no emotion at all.

CosTa suddenly raised her hands and the chant died in an instant, its absence leaving the echoes even louder in our ears. “QualiKa!” she shouted to them, and they shouted back: “Aabi!” We hear!

“We of the QualiKa began in silence, but even in our silence, the humans feared us. We heard the name of QualiKa used when they need something to blame for events they could not explain. Even in our silence and solitude, we found ourselves attacked.”

“Aabi!” they shouted back at CosTa, a roar of affirmation.

CosTa waited until the last echoes had died, leaning forward as if supported by their voices. “While the fires sent the kahina of our companions back to GhazTi, I heard His voice, and I listened, sending out the QualiKa to take vengeance for the honorless killing, to repay life for life and violence for violence.”

“Aabi!”

I could see CosTa take in a great breath, as if she breathed in their adoration. Alongside me, JairTe had shouted as one with them. CosTa closed her pale eyes, then opened them again. “The scales of fate were balanced. Did that satisfy the humans?” She paused, and the next word was a deep roar: “No!”

“Aabi!” they roared back to her, and the chant began once more: “Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo! Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo!” CosTa let it continue for a few moments, her head bowed. When she covered her brais with her hand, they went silent again.

“They attacked us, again and again,” she continued. The heat of her words, the fire of her presence, banished the cold. Now her voice softened, so that we all leaned forward, straining to hear CosTa against the wind and snow. “Without honor, they killed us. Without regard to the KoPavi, they used their weapons. And I say: ENOUGH!”

The single word cracked, sharper than two rocks clashing together. We all jumped, as if the shadows of a wingclaw had passed over our brais, and CosTa continued before we could react further. “Because they are without honor does not mean that we must be the same. Because they ignore the KoPavi does not mean that we will also. I will do as the path dictates: I will send to the humans my xeshai, and ask them to place their own champion against ours. I will send them the terms of the xeshai and ask them to abide by them. I will do that because the KoPavi demands it, but GhazTi has already told me the answer I will receive. They will refuse xeshai. They will refuse honor.”

CosTa waited and the massed voices responded: “Aabi!”

I found myself wanting to scream the word with them.

“We will go to Black Lake,” CosTa shouted. “That is what GhazTi tells me. When the humans refuse xeshai, we will go to Black Lake. When we know that the KoPavi has been broken, we will go to Black Lake. When words have failed, we will go to Black Lake. There, at Black Lake, we will fulfill my grandfather’s vision. At Black Lake, we will take back what has always been ours. At Black Lake, we will take back our land!”

This time, the clamor shook the very ground: “Aabi! Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo! Aabi! Cha’akMongTi, Che’-Veyo!” They would not stop. The tumult continued—an avalanche of noise—as CosTa stood there before them. They were all shouting: the QualiKa in the valley, the guards on the TeNon, JairTe alongside me. They screamed their covenant.

All but me.

Like seeing a scratch in the finish of a fine bowl, my silence drew her. CosTa, her arms wide to them, turned her head slowly to look at me. She frowned. “FirstHand,” she said softly, her call audible only to me and JairTe. “You disappoint me.”

CosTa’s gaze held me, sad but already distant, already turning from me. Beside me, JairTe had gone silent also, listening. “Aabi! Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo!” The chant hammered at my chest, dinned in my ears, and in it I heard death, like the eternal grin of a skull.

“This is not why I came to you,” I told her. I looked out at the mass of CieTiLa, mouths open as they faced CosTa and the TeNon, the bright points of lansa jabbing at the dark, snow-filled clouds above. “This is not why I came,” I repeated. “I’m sorry,” I told her.

And with that bare apology, I let the insistent beat—“Aabi! Cha’akMongTi, Che’Veyo!”—chase me back into TeNon.

VOICE:

Ishiko Allen-Shimmura of the Rock

“I’M SORRY,” CAITLYN SAID.

Behind me, Porfiera cleared her throat, tossed her tools into the bucket of water alongside her wheel, and mumbled something unintelligible as she went upstairs, leaving us alone. Caitlyn watched her go, ker strange light eyes glittering in torchlight and the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of ker mouth. “Off to tell Geema that the awful Sa’s here again?”

“Geema already knows,” I told ker. “Trust me on that.”

“I do,” ke said. “It’s about time I did trust you, I suppose.”

I’d been working on a bowl when Caitlyn had entered the studio, a bare few seconds after my niece Nawal’s breathless announcement that “one of those awful Sa is here to see you, mi Ishi.” I let the wheel spin down, the unfinished piece thick-walled and wet at its center. I wiped gray slip from my right hand onto the landscape of caked, half-dried mud on my apron; my left I left obscured in ridges of wet clay. I used the back of my right hand to push a curl of wayward hair back under my headscarf. I could feel a smear of clay drying on my left cheek.

I was a lovely sight. I hated that ke saw me spattered and filthy, and hated even more that it mattered.

“I’m an ass and an idiot,” Caitlyn said, then grinned when I simply looked at ker in stupefaction. “Don’t be in such a hurry to correct me on that,” ke said.

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” I said, which just proves that sometimes we say things we don’t mean, simply because we don’t know what else to say.

“I think I do. I don’t have many allies here on the Rock. In fact, right now I think it’s down to Linden and you, since I’m not exactly a favorite of the Families and SaTu Terri’s living in ker own fantasy world since Taira was killed, and I don’t need to alienate half of my support group.” Ke grinned again, shifting ker weight from hip to hip. “Gods, that sounded awful,” ke said, then the grin faded, and ker lips tightened. “Look, Ishiko, I’m scared, I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I can use all the friendship and good advice I can find. You told me the truth when you didn’t need to, and I haven’t repaid you very well. I certainly don’t need to hurt you, Ishiko. I’m sorry.”

I just stared at ker. My left hand twitched under its glove of clay. Ke must have seen the motion, taking a step forward until ker finger just touched the rim of the bowl above my left hand. “You know, the Miccail believe that a good potter is also a shaman, linked with the KoPavi. The act of working the clay connects the potter with the ShadowWorld and places a kahina in their work. They say that the sound of a bowl can tell you that: While the spirit lives within the piece, tapping it produces a nice ring. When a bowl cracks or chips, the spirit’s released immediately, and all you get is a dull thunk.” Ker finger dropped and touched my hand, smearing ker fingertip with gray. “You produce magic.”

“Caitlyn, why are you here?”

A half smile tugged at ker mouth. “I came to talk with your Geema and Komoko, actually,” ke said. “I thought they deserved to know the truth, too—about Fianya and how ke died. Linden and I feel we need to tell them.”

“What about the SaTu?” Now that we were off the subject of ourselves and magic, I could trust myself to talk.

Caitlyn shrugged. “Whenever we bring up the subject, ke goes into one of ker fugues. And by the time we take ker back to AnglSaiye and settle the question of whether the SaTu’s fit to continue to run the Community…” A deep exhalation, and a spreading of hands. “Your Family deserves to know what happened, or what we think happened. Komoko certainly deserves to know what happened to her child, so she can have some peace. I’m not looking forward to telling them about Rashi, but it has to be done.”

“You’ve changed, CaitlynSa.”

The grin came and went: a flash. I wanted to smile in response. “That’s what Linden said, too, just a few minutes ago. ‘A month ago, you wouldn’t have been able to handle this.’ That’s probably right, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“You don’t need to,” ke said, but ker voice betrayed ker.

“I know. But Geema sent me with you, and I can verify what I saw. It’ll help—to have one of the Family on your side.”

A flash of teeth, a turn of ker head, then a nod. “Give me a moment to wash up,” I told ker. “Then we’ll go.”

POEM:

“A Moment"—scrawled in the margins of the last journal of Anaïs Koda-Levin

The island’s cliffs do not grasp the cloud’s shadow
The amberdrop cannot hold the wind’s sigh
Like the cloud, like the wind
Your breath takes the moment in
Your breath sends it away again

CONTEXT:

Gentle Koda-Schmidt of the Rock

IN HER SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS OF LIFE. GENTLE HAD seen many things she thought odd. But the male grumbler who stood before the Elder Council was among the strangest. Despite the cold northern air which had descended on them in the last few days, the creature was entirely naked save for white lines swirling over its chest and—more intricately and delicately—about its face.

The grumbler had appeared at Old Bridge, frightening the people gathered at the dock waiting for the Ibn Battuta II to arrive from Hannibal and AnglSaiye. It had no lansa, no weapon except for the dangerous claws on its hands and feet. The grumbler had made no resistance, remaining calm as several of the Rock inhabitants armed themselves and surrounded it. The grumbler seemed unwilling or unable to understand human speech; when questioned by one of the young Allen-Levins who knew grumbler, it claimed to have been sent by CosTa of the QualiKa to offer xeshai, and it requested to speak with the Elder Council.

Xesahi, it was hurriedly explained to Gentle and the other Elders as they gathered in the chamber, was single, unarmed combat used to settle disputes between grumbler tribes.

“That’s absolutely wonderful,” Euzhan sniffed when she was told. Yellow-tinged light from the everlamps sparked glistening reflections from the crystal-studded walls of the chamber. A geodelike fissure within the rock, the curving, tall walls of the chamber were crowded with cal-cite growths, ranging in color from a deep, throbbing yellow to startling white. Gentle had always found it ironic that such a beautiful space had been home to so many petty and angry exchanges over the last two centuries. Such ire should have shattered the crystals and left the walls dark and bare. “And does CosTa expect that we’re going to accept that kind of challenge?”

“Of course we won’t,” Jalon Allen-Levin retorted, his craggy face as sharp as stone. “That’s utter nonsense.”

“I think we should send for the Sa,” Gentle suggested, seeing the obvious sentiments around her. She didn’t know why she suddenly worried about the hostility. Something shivered deep inside her, a portent, a kami’s voice. “I know both Caitlyn and Linden know the grumbler language, and they know their customs. We may need their input.”

“Absolutely not.” Euzhan, her far-too-young face entirely out of place in this gathering of aged women and men, slashed into Gentle’s suggestion before it was even finished. “We will leave the Sa out of it. I never did trust them, and I trust them even less now.”

The news that a Sa had been responsible for Fianya Allen-Shimmura’s death had flashed through the Rock like a fire through summer’s dry tinder, the story growing more interesting with each retelling. Most of Families seemed to be convinced that Rashi hadn’t acted alone, that the kidnapping of Fianya had been a deliberate act concocted by the SaTu as retaliation against Family Allen-Shimmura’s refusal to willingly send Fianya to AnglSaiye. Gentle had heard speculation that Rashi’s “suicide” had simply been the Sa’s attempt to hush up the botched kidnapping. Wilder and more exotic theories abounded: that Fianya was going to be sacrificed to VeiSaTi, that ke had indeed been sacrificed and the body thrown over the cliff to hide the evidence, that the QualiKa had been involved in helping the Sa snatch the child.

Gentle believed none of that. She’d grown up on AnglSaiye—her mam was Anaïs (named for the O’Sa herself); her grandmam was Gabriela, the first child born from a human-Sa relationship; her great-grandmam had been Máire, the woman for whom O’Sa Anaïs had been shunned. Despite her lineage, Gentle didn’t feel particularly close to the Sa. Terri and Taira had been given to the Community of Sa two years before Gentle had been born—she’d never had a chance to know the twin Sa since they were usually at the Sa temple rather than the Family’s AnglSaiye compound. Not long after her menarche, Gentle had fallen in lust with Jorge Allen-Levin, Jalon’s brother, and followed him back to the Rock. The lust had lasted only a month or so before they drifted apart, but Gentle had stayed at the Rock, in her Family’s compound there, ever since. She really didn’t know the Sa or the SaTu much better than Euzhan did herself. Still, Euzhan’s reaction to her suggestion to consult the Sa was understandable,

“I know how you feel, Euzhan,” Gentle said. “I’m only thinking of the good of our Families.”

Euzhan scowled at that, lines marring her perfect face. Gentle had always expected that one day all that bitter acid Euzhan carried around inside her would corrode that youthful shell of a body from the inside and come spilling out, her body shriveling into a wrinkled puddle like the husk of a spring peeper in autumn. It hadn’t happened yet. It probably never would, but the image was pleasant to contemplate when Euzhan was ranting. “Nothing that comes of the Sa is good for the Families, Gentle, and what’s happened recently has only given further illustration to that. Any of the Families who can’t see the Sa poison now are hopelessly blind.”

Gentle let that comment pass—Euzhan knew perfectly well that SaTu Terri and Taira were Gentle’s elder sibs and that the Sa—especially Linden—had spent many a night recently with members of the Koda-Schmidt Family. The barb had been well placed, but Gentle was determined not to let Euzhan see that it hurt. “Blindness is not using all the resources available,” Gentle answered. “I say we need them here. I doubt that I’m the only one who feels that way.”

She hadn’t been—except for the Allen-Shimuras, every Family had relatives living on AnglSaiye, and even on the Rock there were a few Elders whose sympathies lay with AnglSaiye. It had ended up going to a vote, at Gentle’s insistence. She knew she’d lose in the end: Her tenacity in pushing the issue had been more to annoy Euzhan than anything else. As usual, Euzhan’s opinion was upheld by the majority of the Elders. As usual. Euzhan’s great age and history gave her power within the Elder Council far beyond the size of her Family.

The grumbler was brought before the Council with the doors to the hall shut to keep out the curious.

The grumbler was defiance personified. That was the first impression Gentle had. It shrugged away the hands that guided it to a chair before the curved rows of the Council seats. It did not sit; it stood, legs spread wide. For a moment—a moment only—its stoic face softened as it gazed at the brilliant, dazzling walls around it, then the sour expression solidified once more as its gaze found the humans. Its hands fisted and the tip of its footclaws lifted, causing the two armed guards at either side of the Elder’s dais to bring their weapons up. It glared at them disdainfully, lifted its chin and spoke. A moment later, over the stream of low-pitched grunts and growls, Gavrilo Allen-Levin translated.

“I am FayiXe, and I have been sent to offer xeshai to the Elders of the Rock. CosTa of the QualiKa declares that the Rock and land of the Black Lake belong to the CieTiLa, as a free place and refuge for all the people. The CieTiLa have been generous in letting the humans remain here as if you were CieTiLa, but you have betrayed that trust. You prevent the CieTiLa from coming here. You kill CieTiLa and drive them away. You despoil the sacred rocks and change the land. You do not respect the kahina who live here also, and you do not listen to our gods. Because you will not talk with us, because you will not listen to our grievances, CosTa now asks for formal xeshai to settle this dispute. Send your chosen xeshai champion with me. Let us come together to the shores of Black Lake, where both human and CieTiLa can witness xeshai. Let us struggle with the blessings of our gods, so that we may see who is stronger.”

“And if you win, we’re supposed to leave the Rock, is that what you’re suggesting?” Henrik Allen-Levin, to Gentle’s left, shouted it with a laugh. “And I suppose that if our champion wins, the QualiKa will disband and CosTa will surrender herself for the murders he’s caused. I certainly believe that will happen.”

Euzhan was shaking her head. “Don’t even give it the dignity of talking about this xeshai, Henrik. That’s not even an option. Let’s not pretend that it is.”

“Ask it what happens if we refuse, Gavrilo,” Gentle said. To Euzhan’s glance, she added: “I don’t disagree with you, Euz, but we need to know the answer to that so we can plan, nei? Go on, Gavrilo.”

Euzhan shrugged; Gavrilo translated the question. “I don’t know,” the grumbler answered. “I am only xeshai. No more. Ask CosTa.”

“Tell us where we can find her, and we will,” Euzhan responded.

The grumbler gave an audible snort when that was translated, the triple nasal slits flexing. Muscles rippled along its body as it shifted weight from one foot to another. It glanced casually from face to face of the nineteen Elders, as if memorizing their features. “CosTa may come to you, instead,” FayiXe told them. “But if she does, it won’t be to answer your questions. Do we have xeshai or not?—that is all I’m here to ask.”

“You do not,” Euzhan answered, and the murmur of agreement that followed her statement told Gentle that there was no need for discussion or to call a vote on the issue. FayiXe received the answer with no change in its expression. The grumbler’s body seemed to shiver, the white lines painted on it shifting with the motion, then FayiXe turned and began walking toward the doors. The two guards—both from Family Allen-Shimmura—started to go after it, but Euzhan shook her head. “Go with it to make sure it doesn’t cause any trouble leaving the Rock, but otherwise leave it alone,” she told them.

FayiXe opened the doors and walked out of the chamber without so much as a backward glance.

“I hope we didn’t just make a mistake,” Gentle said, as the doors boomed shut behind the grumbler.

“Mistake?” Euzhan loosed a short, bitter laugh. “Call it back then, and let it know that you’ll hand over your Family’s compound to the grumblers. Are you willing to do that, Gentle? I’m not. Not while there’s still breath in my body. This is our home. We built it from nothing, and generations of our Families have died here guaranteeing that we could survive here. That’s all I need to know.”

“I know that too, Euz. It’s just…”

“Just what?” The other Elders watched the two of them, and Gentle saw no sympathy in their faces at all.

“Nothing,” she sighed. “Nothing.”

Or simply so much that there was no way to say it all.

With a shadow over her soul, Gentle said good-bye to the rest of the Elders and left the chamber.